Part 44

Theresa took an invoice of the damage the mob had done: she felt that Jason Philip was a ruined man.

As he lay stretched out in bed, Jason Philip said: “The first thing I want to do is to have a serious, heart-to-heart talk with Baron Auffenberg. The Liberal Party is going to take direct action against the impudence of the lower classes, or it is going to lose a constituent.”

“How many quarts of beer did you drink?” asked Theresa from the depths of the pillows.

“Two.”

“You are a liar.”

“Well, possibly I drank three,” replied Jason Philip with a yawn. “But to accuse a man of my standing of lying on such small grounds is an act of perfidy such as only an uncultured woman like yourself could be brought to commit.”

Theresa blew out the candle.

Baron Siegmund von Auffenberg had returned from Munich, where he had had an interview with the Minister.

He had also seen a great many other people in the presence of whom he was condescending, jovial, and witty. His amiability was proverbial.

Now he was sitting with a gloomy face by the chimney. Not a one of those many people who had so recently been charmed by his conversational gifts would have recognised him.

The stillness and loneliness pained him. An irresistible force drew him to his wife. He had not seen her for seven weeks, though they had lived in the same house.

He was drawn to her, because he wanted to know whether she had heard anything from that person whose name he did not like to mention, from his son, his enemy, his heir. Not that he wanted to ask his wife any questions: he merely wished to read her face. Since no one in the vicinity had dared say a word to him about his son, he was forced to rely on suppositions and the subtle cunning of his senses at ferreting out information on this kind of subjects. He did not dare betray the curiosity with which he waited for some one to inform him that his hated offspring had at last come to mortal grief.

Six years had elapsed, and still he could hear the insolent voice in which the monstrous remarks were made that had torn him from the twilight of his self-complacency; remarks that distressed him more than any other grief he may have felt in the secrecy of his bed chamber and which completely and forever robbed him of all the joys of human existence.

“Dépêche-toi, mon bon garçon,” screeched the parrot.

The Baron arose, and went to his wife’s room. She was terrified when she saw him enter. She was lying on a sofa, her head propped up by cushions, a thick Indian blanket spread out over her legs.

She had a broad, bloated face, thick lips, and unusually big black eyes, in which there was a sickly glare. She had been regarded as a beauty in her young days, though none of this beauty was left, unless it was the freshness of her complexion or the dignified bearing of the born lady of the world.

She sent her maid out of the room, and looked at her husband in silence. She studied the friendly, Jesuitic wrinkles in his face, by virtue of which he managed to conceal his real thoughts. Her anxiety was increased.

“You have not played the piano any to-day,” he began in a sweet voice. “It makes the house seem as though something were missing. I am told that you have acquired perfect technique, and that you have engaged a new teacher. Emilia told me this.”

Emilia was their daughter. She was married to Count Urlich, captain of cavalry.

In the Baroness’s eyes there was an expression such as is found in the eyes of some leashed beast when the butcher approaches, axe in hand. She was tortured by the smoothness of the man from whom she had never once in the last quarter of a century received anything but brutality and scorn, and from whom she had suffered the grossest of humiliations—when no one was listening.

“What do you want, Siegmund?” she asked, with painful effort.

The Baron stepped close up to her, bit his lips, and looked at her for ten or twelve seconds with a fearful expression on his face.

She then seized him by the left arm: “What is the matter with Eberhard?” she cried; “tell me, tell me everything! There is something wrong.”

The Baron, with a gesture of stinging aversion, thrust her hands from him, and turned to go. There was unfathomable coldness in his conduct.

Beside herself with grief, the Baroness made up her mind to tell him, for the first time in her life, of the thousand wrongs that burned within her heart. And she did: “Oh, you monster! Why did Fate bring you into my life? Where is there another woman in the world whose lot has been like mine? Where is the woman who has lived without joy or love or esteem or freedom or peace, a burden to others and to herself? Show me another woman who goes about in silk and satin longing for death. Name me another woman who people think is happy, because the devil, who tortures her without ceasing, deceives them all. Where is there another woman who has been so shamelessly robbed of her children? For is not my daughter the captive and concubine of an insane tuft-hunter? Has not my son been taken from me through the baseness that has been practised against his sister, and the lamentable spectacle afforded him by my own powerlessness? Where, I ask high Heaven, is there another woman so cursed as I have been?”

She threw herself down on her bosom, and burrowed her face into the cushion.

The Baron was surprised at the feverish eloquence of his wife; he had accustomed himself to her mute resignation, as he might have accustomed himself to the regular, monotonous ticking of a hall clock. He was anxious to see what she would do next, how she would develop her excitement; she was a novel phenomenon in his eyes: therefore he remained standing in the door.

But as he stood there in chilly expectancy, his haggard face casting off expressions of scorn and surprise, he suddenly sensed a feeling of weary disgust at himself. It was the disgust of a man whose wishes had always been fulfilled, whose lusts had been satisfied; of a man who has never known other men except as greedy and practical supplicants; of a man who has always been the lord of his friends, the tyrant of his servants, and the centre of all social gatherings; of a man before whom all others yielded, to whom all others bowed; of a man who had never renounced anything but the feeling of renunciation.